On November 14, 1797, Charles Lyell, British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day, was born. Lyell was a close friend to Charles Darwin and is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today.
The journal, which is published nine times a year, encompasses the entire range of metamorphic studies, from the scale of the individual crystal to that of lithospheric plates, including regional studies of metamorphic terranes, modelling of metamorphic processes, microstructural and deformation studies in relation to metamorphism, geochronology and geochemistry in metamorphic systems, the experimental study of metamorphic reactions, properties of metamorphic minerals and rocks and the economic aspects of metamorphic terranes.